One can still choose to have codes about how ones world is treated. Like a game where you can choose to become evil or good... evil and good wasys of playing are available and still exist in the game even though it isn't real. Morality is not imnpossible in solipism. Morality boils down to choice and consequences. It is down to the person wether an act is considered imoral or moral no matter your view of the world.

One can have a solipist view of life as a choice without being a true solipist (much like alot of christians). There are benefits to thinking in this way. one feels more free to follow instinct for instance.

Madnak wrote
This is important. I think it can be argued that the outside 3d world cannot exist... without the inside world. The outside 3d world is completely unique for each individual and the same goes for i an ndividuals internal worlds. Ones external world can only exist THROUGH an internal wold... Therefore you i can only exist to you via your inside world... It is an image.... There is no substance except in ones mind. If there was no unique external world for an individual that person would still have their internal world (for instance someone born without ANY senses). This internal world can create any external world in its place due to its infinite depth. Dreams and comas are important to consider as an example of how this can occur.

Maths and science cannot be used for argument in all of this. Internal worlds are completely philosiphical topics. Solipism is a part of ones internal world... it is a view of this world... There is no data, no substance... nothing quantitative whatsoever apart from the FACT that it is there... we all feel and live it on our own plane of existance. Thats why it is so damn interesting! There is truth in all views of life or how could that view have come about in the first place? The difficulty with people is relating. Solipism is no different... You cannot disprove it to yourslef... and that can be slightly maddening... LOL just like in the same wayit can be maddening to think that I am a actually a pink spongy brain on a stick with long strands of nerves. Its discussion like this about such ways of thinking that gives more understanding.

I started down this road 100 or so messages ago.

As far as I am concerned, your point of view (which pretty closely mirrors mine) is largely substantiated by madnak himself, in so far as he has acknowledged that his solipsistic view has no concrete effect on anything that he can think of, but does have the effect of leaving him with one less axiom than (apparently) almost everyone else in this discussion, when discussing philosophical matters. And he has acknowledged that when talking about anything at all that bears on his belief in solipsism, he is forced to equivocate and use lots of creative language to effectively communicate -- which I would summarize by saying he basically "pretends" he is not a solipsist, or "ignores it" and proceeds to behaves indistinguishably from those who do not acknowledge the solipsistic view point.

And, of course, there is no refutation to solipsism. It makes sense. And I liken it to the "agnostic-atheist, non-practicing" position on religion/god(s): I don't think it is knowable, and given that, I lack any positive beliefs or claims in the matter, ... however... it has no effect on my life, and for all intents and purposes you could say I behave as if I was a theist. Or, if you want to look at it the other way, you could say that people who claim they are not solipsists, actually behave as if they were. But I'm trying to stick to the basics.

All these messages asking him if he is lonely, etc., miss the point. People who don't consider solipsism (much less consider it a sound position to hold) find themselves lonely. And others don't. And trying to tack attributes onto him, when we can see for ourselves how he behaves at least in these forums, is silly. This "if you are a solipsist, then you must think..." reminds me of a friend of mine who started to grow his hair long, and his mother became concerned because, she told him, bad people have long hair. "But I'm not a bad person, and I have long hair," he told her. So here we have people whose minds are wondering, coming up with all kinds of scenarios for how someone who believes it cannot be proved that anything exists outside of his mind will/must/ought to behave, and are acting like madnak behave in that way, if he really believes what he claims, even though (we can only take him at his word) he does believe what he says, and he clearly doesn't act like that.

How do you justify this claim. I believe you replace exist with " be perceived".

Hmm. I might be in trouble, here.

The argument is that they are the same thing. The extrenal world as a product of our internal world. (as i said about dreams and ppl born without senses and the external worlds easy replacement due to the infinte depth and creativity of internal) How we percieve things is dependant on our internal worlds. You canot prove that how we percieve things = reality. Everyones reality is unique... is my world real or yours? (the answer is both of course). Everyone has a unique perception of reality. I jsutified this in the same post. It is comletely philosophical. Madnak has justified it himself several times also and it is amazing to find someone who can grasp the fundamental aspecs that solipism needs (altho solipism in general to me is flawed and socially unhealthy view). There are flaws in solipism as their are flaws in everyones perception including realisism. It is in the act of relating whereas difficulty lies and it is this act that i strive to abosrob. Providing quantitiatve arguments cannot sway the argument in any direction. The main poiont was that substance can only exist in an internal world. The exteranl world is an image derrived from physical energy which lies outside the plane of other energies that exist internally and connaot be studied via external world medium.

I do not follow solipism. It is a matter of appeal... just like being the robotic reaction to stimulii of a computerised spongey pink brain on a stick also does not appeal. How does this create the substance of an inernal world? how can a pink spongey brain on a stick create the infinite substance of the human soul? I believe it to be impossible. There must be energies that exist out of the limited and quantitive physical energy that is everything external. Solipism is a philosophical way of 'percieving' what sceience and maths cannot... however flawed... there is some truth in it.

A true solopsist would never have made this thread,much less posted in it.

I can't speak for madnak, but suppose I am a solipsist, I see the way message boards work, I enjoy reading the threads, and I decide that it might be more interesting and fun to actually take part in the conversations myself. Why would I not make this thread?

I'm all ears. As I have said a number of times, I think these naive claims, intuitive though they may seem, are not justifiable. They are akin to saying, "If you don't believe in god, why aren't you killing and raping people then?"

bump

From wikipeda

Seems a natural belief but really rather egotistical. One might make a case for there being something, but our mind?

Well for sanities sake its probably best to pretend that we are a mind, and to go with the flow of what our remembered experiences appear to tell us.

However the assumption of movement in time is a luxury. For instance there is no reason to suppose that we are more than a static image. Our past compiled together for just one instant, to be dismantled again before the next instant.

I like to imagine someone (mentally somewhat more advanced than us) reading a book and one of the characters is a bit like me. The reader tries to imagine the character, trying out a few possibilities and then rejecting them before getting a decent match. I am then one of the imagined characters, existing for just a moment in someone else's imagination before being rejected as not matching the character in the book.

Edit: Ops sorry got caught by a bump.

I have existed from the morning of the world and I shall exist until the last star falls from the heavens. Even though at times I am plagued by doubt, terrible doubts, I must constantly remind myself that I am all men, as I am no man, and so I am... a God.

No offense, but you sound like a total nutcase. Seek help.

I struggled through most of the first page of this thread before giving up. Forgive me but I'm not sure that this discussion is leading anywhere at all. I really can't derive any meaning from the language of philosophy (not sure if that's an apt term for it).

Why is it unreasonable to think that everything in this world is made of matter that functions according to physical rules?

Why should I not think that the minds of other humans are like my own?\

Perhaps nothing can be proven but... come on people. I think we all have a pretty good idea of the nature of our reality.

I know that baseless speculation as to the nature of what our minds perceive is fruitless, but if reality is not as it appears to be, then what do you suppose it might be? Do you honestly believe you are a sole mind who was put into some sort of computer simulation? I have pondered these things and it's an interesting line of thought but I think we are lying to ourselves when we actually start to believe that there's an inkling of truth to it. It's terribly narcissistic to look at all that goes on around you and think it was all a product of your own mind or a deception.

I feel as though this way of viewing reality is just a way for one to believe there is maybe something more in store for them than their short human life. A "religion" for the skeptical.

And yeah, I realize that I can't speak like a philosopher, but you guys should be able to figure out the point I'm trying to make here.

Knowledge of reality, in the sense of reasonably accurate modeling of physical phenomena, is perfectly compatible with solipsism. The fact that the universe, as you perceive it, has observable regularities that are susceptible to expression in a system of formal rules - that is, mathematics - doesn't show that the universe is external to the mind.

The solipsistic argument is not that everything is a "product of your own mind or a deception." In other words, the idea isn't that the reality you perceive is an illusion, and that there is some "realer" reality that can be accessed through philosophical reflection ("I will myself to awake from the Matrix!"). Rather, the solipsistic argument is that there are no criteria by which you can objectively demonstrate that the reality you perceive is somehow external to your mind. Anything you might propose fails (really! try it!).

On the contrary, it entails that this short human life is all there is and all there ever will be.

madnak,

I never got an answer to this:

So let me try and elaborate on what I meant. Here's the post to which I was responding:

To do the conceptual work necessary to refute the Kripkenstein paradox, "multiple authors" are necessary. Let me review the paradox, in case you haven't thought about it recently. Assume that, in the past, I have performed only finitely many addition problems, and that I have never added together any numbers larger than 56. A skeptic denies that there is any fact I can cite that shows that, as I used the symbol "+" in the past, I did not really mean the quus function rather than the plus function, where X quus Y = X + Y if X < 57, else = 5. As it turns out, the skeptic's argument is irrefutable.

Assuming that the assumption of an external reality also cannot be justified, now we are left with a world where both: (a) I cannot show that I have knowledge of anything outside the mind; (b) I cannot show that there are any rules that constrain my applications of concepts. The mind then is, to quote Davidson, "frictionless spinning in a void." Showing that there appear to be other people who seem to apply concepts the same way "I" do doesn't get me out of that, since the same skeptical doubts can be introduced about "their" applications of concepts.